The Bloom: Season Five, Reading ThreeThe Eye of the StormSeason curated by Lisa D. Gray

The Bloom is a monthly literary series featuring Bay Area writers, where a past reader curates five readers around a theme. It’s an entertaining evening of diverse voices and personal style, bridging narratives and communities. It was founded by Margaret Bacon, Tara Dorabji, and Jason Wyman in the summer of 2012.

ABOUT THE HOST

JASON WYMAN, November HostJason Wyman is many things. He is an experimental writer performing critiques of permanence, acceptance, death, and transcendence. He also facilitates intergenerational arts and wellness experiences through 14 Black Poppies, revives the collective spirits of the LGBTQIA communities through OutLook Theater Project, and transforms his body into the Illustrated Man 2.0 where each tattoo tells a fable.

Jason has performed at The News, Poetry Mission: The New Shit Show, the Ocean Avenue Art Walk, Try SOME THING, and other cultural events. His writing appears at In Our Words, A Salon for Queers and Company and Mission Local. Jason was also the featured chef at Feast of Word's Feast with Ben making a delectable roasted tomato bread pudding.

Regardless of who he is at any given moment, Jason is also (and always) a husband to his greatest love, John. And he is always and forever family to those on the margins. He has called San Francisco home for over 14 years.

ABOUT THE READERS

SHIRLEY ACUNAis an artist who works with a variety of mediums. Her work is fueled by a desire to spark imagination and promote community by taking daily life as the subject matter, while commenting on the friction between various polarities such as ego and spirit, and the journey we undertake to better understand and balance these forces. Acuna creates using interactive game tactics, challenging the viewer to: question, participate and disengage from societal expectations. Acuna participated in OutLook’s The Ages, a multi-generational performance developed for The News at Somarts in January 2014 and has been with OutLook ever since.

DIANNE BRENNAN -- Bio coming soon

TARA DORABJI is a writer, arts educator, mother, and radio journalist at KPFA. Her work is published or forthcoming in the Tayo Literary Magazine, Huizache, Censored 2013, Mutha and Midwifery Today. Tara is working on her first novel, Azadi. Her projects can be viewed at dorabji.com.

ANNA MARIA LUERA -- Bio coming soon

PHIROOZEH ROMERis happiest when she is writing. She lives in the South Bay with the best husband a temperamental artist type could ask for. She is currently working on her first novel.

JAMES TRACY -- Bio coming soon

ABOUT LISA D GRAY, series curator

If Lisa D. Gray could be any literary figure, it’d Janie from Their Eyes Were Watching God because she inhales life and is a perfect literary imagining. Lisa grew up in New Haven, CT and secretly adores 19th Century Brit literature. Right now she’s really into young adult fiction either by southern writers or that takes place in the south because her novel in progress, One Summer, follows a group of teenage girls in a small Georgia town during the civil rights movement, She earned her MFA in English & Creative Writing from Mills College and possesses a BA in English from Spelman College. She’s done workshops with the Voices of Our Nation’s Foundation and the Fine Arts Wrk Center, and last year lived in VT for a few weeks for a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Links to her literary musings appear on her blog The Randomness of Me at http://www.randomnessofme.tumblr.com/. Her work will appear in Mission at 10th Literary Journal and the online edition of Generations this spring. Her short fiction, memoir, and poetry have also appeared in the Spelman Spotlight and Yahoo Voices.